Privacy policy

Who we are

Gigasaurus is a free, open-source companion site for ARK: Survival Ascended. “We” means the people who maintain it. The code is public on GitHub, so anything this policy says can be checked against what the site actually does.

What stays in your browser

The site saves the following on your device, using your browser's own storage. None of it is sent to us.

• Imported creatures. Everything read from the export files you import: names and past names, species, level, stats, colors, mutations, imprinting, ancestry, and the tribe, owner and imprinter names ARK writes into the file.
• Saved folders. If you save your DinoExports folder, the browser keeps permission to read it, along with the folder's name, whether you're watching it, and when it was last checked. The site only reads .ini export files from it, and only while My Creatures is open.
• Preferences. Your light or dark theme, and whether you've finished each guided tour.

To remove it, delete creatures from My Creatures (Select, then Delete), remove saved folders under Import creatures, or clear this site's data in your browser settings, which removes everything at once. Clearing it can't be undone unless you have a Drive backup.

Filters and searches are kept in the page address, so they're in your browser history like any other page you visit.

Google Drive backup (optional)

Backup to Drive and Restore from Drive are off until you click them. When you do, the site loads Google's sign-in from Google and asks for one permission: access to a hidden app folder in your Drive that only Gigasaurus can see. It can't read or change any of your other Drive files.

• A backup is a single file containing your imported creatures, saved to that hidden folder in your Drive. It goes straight from your browser to Google; it never passes through our servers.
• The sign-in token is kept in memory for that visit only and is never stored or sent to us.
• To delete the backup, open Google Drive, go to Settings, then Manage apps, find Gigasaurus and choose Delete hidden app data. You can remove the site's access at your Google Account.

Google handles the sign-in and stores the file under Google's privacy policy.

Analytics and hosting

The site is hosted by Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel receives the standard details of each request, such as your IP address, browser and the page asked for, to deliver the site and protect it from abuse.

We use two Vercel tools to see how the site is used and how fast it loads:

• Web Analytics counts page views, with the referring site, country, browser, operating system and device type. It doesn't use cookies or identify you across sites or days.
• Speed Insights measures load times and responsiveness on the pages you visit.

We only see totals, like how many people opened the Ragnarok map this week. We never see your imported creatures.

Content from other sites

Some in-color creature renders are loaded straight from GitHub (the open arkutils species images), so GitHub receives those image requests from your browser. Links to the ARK Wiki, Dododex, GitHub and other sites take you to services with their own privacy policies.

What we don't do

• We don't run ads or use advertising or tracking cookies.
• We don't sell, rent or share personal information.
• We don't keep your imported creatures, or any copy of them, on our servers.

Children

Gigasaurus isn't aimed at children under 13 and doesn't knowingly collect personal information from them. Because there are no accounts and imported data stays on the device, there's nothing for us to collect.

Changes to this policy

If what the site collects changes, this page will be updated and the effective date above will change with it. Past versions are in the project's history on GitHub.

Questions

Ask anything about privacy by opening an issue on GitHub. Issues are public, so leave out anything you'd rather keep private.